The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) joins widespread condemnation of the armed attack last January 7 against the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Three men armed with automatic weapons attacked and opened fire at the magazine office, killing at least 12 people, including its editor, writers and cartoonists. Several others were wounded. The CPP and the Filipino people extend their sympathies to the family, friends and colleagues of the victims of this atrocious crime.

Shooting down people working in a magazine or newsroom is completely unacceptable. The victims of the massacre were unarmed and defenseless and should not have been made targets of an armed attack, however offensive, insulting and provoking it was to Islam and other religious, political and philosophical beliefs. The attack against Charlie Hebdo highlights the dangers confronted by journalists around the world. But however reprehensible the killings were, they should not be invoked as pretext for heightened repression.

At the same time, the killings further underscore the overarching problem of worsening intolerance, bigotry and fascism against religious and political beliefs, race and gender, especially in the centers of global capitalism. As the international crisis of the capitalist system worsens and protracts, the monopoly bourgeoisie and big finance promote such reactionary currents to divide the people.

The reactionaries seek to blind the people and prevent them from seeing the systemic roots of the crisis and the need to wage revolutionary struggle against capitalism and imperialism.

The CPP censures the imperialist US, French, German and UK governments and their puppet Israeli government for hypocritically sidling up to the cause of tolerance and media freedom. They conveniently omit the fact that its so-called "war against terror" of the past 15 years has been at the core of racial profiling, torture and the mass killing of civilians from Afghanistan to Iraq, Nigeria to Palestine. They have promoted militarism, national aggression and interventionism in a desperate bid to revive the capitalist system through war production.

The people must repudiate such reactionary trends and oppose these with progressive, scientific, pro-people and revolutionary ideas. The CPP calls on the promotion of the democratic, social and national interests and views of the workers and other exploited classes and oppressed peoples. The CPP calls on the people to unite and advance the struggle against imperialism and achieve social and national liberation.